# Census Bureau Org Chart An ASCII-art map of the **U.S. Census Bureau** — the chain of command that reaches it from outside, the Director's seat and the statute that creates it, the directorates and management offices underneath, the permanent field structure, the temporary workforce that exists for about two years a decade, and the oversight layer that is supposed to watch all of it. Structure and seat status **as of 22 September 2026**, at the top of the 2030 cycle. The map is additive to [[Census Bureau]], which describes the agency, and to the [[Census]] cluster, which routes the process maps. Where [[How the Census Is Actually Counted]] maps the operation, this maps the institution that runs it. It is the Bureau-level companion to [[Federal Statistical System Tree]] and sits under [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] at the Commerce node. The organizing fact the chart is built around: **the Bureau's statutory protections all attach to one seat, and that seat is empty.** Title 13 creates the Director — Senate-confirmed, five-year term, removal only on sixty days' written notice to Congress — and creates no other officer at all. Everything below the Director is appointed, restructured and removed at will, which is why the number-two post could be abolished and replaced with two new ones in June 2026 by press release. > [!note] How to read this chart > No individual is named inside the code fence — seat holders are carried in the dated table *below* the chart, so the structure stays readable when names change. **★** marks a Senate-confirmed seat. **⚑** marks a seat filled in an acting or "performing the duties of" capacity. **○** marks a vacant post. **✖** marks a body that has been terminated and no longer exists. Bracketed notes flag dated changes. Statutory citations are to Title 13, U.S. Code. ``` U.S. CENSUS BUREAU — ORGANIZATION & OVERSIGHT (structure as of 2026-09-22) │ ★ Senate-confirmed ⚑ acting / "performing the duties of" ○ vacant ✖ terminated │ Seat holders are not named inside this fence — see the dated table below the chart. │ │ ┈┈ THE CHAIN ABOVE THE BUREAU ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ │ PRESIDENT ──▶ SECRETARY OF COMMERCE ★ ──▶ UNDER SECRETARY FOR ECONOMIC AFFAIRS ★ │ │ oversees Census · BEA · OCE │ ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┼┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ │ ▼ ■ U.S. CENSUS BUREAU — a bureau of the Department of Commerce · Title 13, U.S. Code │ ├─◆ DIRECTOR OF THE CENSUS ★ ⚑ ..................................... 13 U.S.C. § 21 │ │ │ ├─ APPOINTMENT ... by the President with Senate advice and consent, "without │ │ regard to political affiliation," from persons with demonstrated ability │ │ managing large organizations and experience in the collection, analysis │ │ and use of statistical data. § 21(a) │ │ │ ├─ TERM ......... 5 years, beginning 1 Jan 2012 and every fifth year after — so │ │ the current term runs 1 Jan 2022 → 31 Dec 2026, and the next begins │ │ 1 Jan 2027. No individual may serve more than 2 full terms. § 21(b)(1) │ │ │ ├─ VACANCY ...... a successor is appointed only for THE REMAINDER of the term │ │ the predecessor was appointed to — a vacancy shortens the successor's │ │ tenure, it does not restart the clock. § 21(b)(2) │ │ │ ├─ REMOVAL ...... the President may remove the Director, and must communicate │ │ the reasons in writing to both Houses NOT LATER THAN 60 DAYS BEFORE the │ │ removal. A notice requirement, not a cause requirement. § 21(b)(3) │ │ │ └─ DUTIES ....... "such duties as may be imposed upon the Director by law, │ regulations, or orders of the Secretary." § 21(c) │ │ [ SEAT UNFILLED SINCE FEBRUARY 2025 — roughly 19 months, and counting, of a │ term that expires 31 Dec 2026. The duties are being performed by a Deputy │ Under Secretary from the Commerce Under Secretary's own office, not by a │ Bureau official. No nominee has been sent to the Senate. ] │ ├─◆ DEPUTY DIRECTORS — NO STATUTORY BASIS WHATSOEVER │ │ Title 13 creates the Director and then stops. § 22 requires only that │ │ permanent personnel be U.S. citizens; §§ 23–26 cover temporary staff, │ │ enumerator duties and travel. There is no deputy in the statute. │ │ Congress tried to write one in: a 2022 bill would have created a │ │ "single Deputy Director," career-reserved. It died in the Senate. │ │ │ │ [ 12 JUN 2026: the single career Deputy Director / Chief Operating │ │ Officer post was replaced by TWO appointed deputies, announced by │ │ press release. No statute, no confirmation, no notice to Congress │ │ was required — because none of it is written down anywhere. ] │ │ │ ├─ DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR DATA, POLICY AND SCIENCE │ │ [came in from the Commerce Under Secretary's office] │ └─ DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR ADMINISTRATION AND OPERATIONS │ [promoted from Bureau CIO — which left the CIO seat acting] │ ├─◆ PROGRAM DIRECTORATES (associate directors — career service, no confirmation) │ ├─ Decennial Census Programs ..... the 2030 count · the 2026 test · the address file │ ├─ Demographic Programs ⚑ ....... ACS · CPS · SIPP · the population estimates program │ ├─ Economic Programs ............ Economic Census · AIES · trade and business stats │ ├─ Research and Methodology ⚑ ... Chief Scientist; methods and disclosure avoidance │ ├─ Field Operations ............. the six regions and the entire field workforce │ └─ Communications ............... public affairs · partnership · respondent outreach │ ├─◆ MANAGEMENT OFFICES │ ├─ Chief Administrative Officer │ ├─ Chief Financial Officer │ ├─ Chief Information Officer ⚑ │ └─ Office of Program, Performance & Stakeholder Integration ○ [VACANT] │ ├─◆ PERMANENT FIELD STRUCTURE │ ├─ SIX REGIONAL OFFICES — each under a Regional Director, each covering 7–12 states │ │ Atlanta ....... AL FL GA LA MS NC SC │ │ Chicago ....... AR IL IN IA MI MN MO WI │ │ Denver ........ AZ CO KS MT NE NM ND OK SD TX UT WY │ │ Los Angeles ... AK CA HI ID NV OR WA │ │ New York ...... CT ME MA NH NJ NY PR RI VT │ │ Philadelphia .. DE DC KY MD OH PA TN VA WV │ │ │ └─ NATIONAL PROCESSING CENTER — mail, data capture, imaging, contact centers │ [relocating from Jeffersonville, Ind. to Charlestown, Ind., summer 2026; │ second contact-center site at Tucson, Ariz.] │ └─◆ THE DECENNIAL SURGE (temporary — exists about two years a decade, then dissolves) │ Authorized separately from permanent staff: the Secretary may establish │ temporary positions outside the ordinary classification system to meet the │ work, and "temporary" means not more than one year OR the life of the │ census appropriation, whichever is longer. §§ 23(a), 24(a)–(b) │ ├─ Area Census Offices ..... stood up under the regions for the count, then closed ├─ Field supervisors ....... hired, trained and released inside the same cycle └─ Enumerators ............. several hundred thousand in a decennial year — the largest temporary hiring event in the federal government, and every one of them sworn for life to the § 9 confidentiality obligation, on pain of § 214 ┈┈ THE OVERSIGHT LAYER ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ STILL STANDING ├─ Commerce Office of Inspector General ⚑ ... audits the Bureau — but the IG seat │ itself has been filled in an acting "performing the duties" capacity │ since July 2025, by a career OIG investigator named by the President ├─ Government Accountability Office ......... REMOVED the decennial census from its │ High-Risk List in 2023 and now only MONITORS 2030 planning. There is no │ standing high-risk designation left to trigger anything ├─ House Oversight & Government Reform ...... legislative jurisdiction over the census ├─ Senate Homeland Security & Govt. Affairs . the Senate counterpart └─ Appropriations — CJS subcommittees ....... the annual money, and the real lever TERMINATED ✖ — all three by one notice: 90 FR 24383 (10 Jun 2025), "Notice of Termination of 14 Discretionary Federal Advisory Committees," issued under Executive Order 14217, "Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy." The notice requested no public comment. ├─ Census Scientific Advisory Committee ✖ ........ methods and statistical quality ├─ Census National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic │ and Other Populations ✖ .................... hard-to-count populations └─ 2030 Census Advisory Committee ✖ .............. chartered for THIS count WHAT REPLACED THEM └─ Nothing inside the government. Former CSAC members reconstituted themselves privately as the Independent Census Scientific Advisory Committee and met on 18 Sep 2025 — a body with no charter, no federal status, no access to internal material, and no standing to receive anything the Bureau does not already publish. ``` ## Officeholders as of 22 September 2026 Carried outside the fence so the structure above stays stable as seats turn over. Every entry below was web-verified on 2026-09-22. | Seat | Holder | Status | |---|---|---| | Secretary of Commerce | Howard Lutnick | Confirmed 21 Feb 2025 | | Under Secretary for Economic Affairs | Joyce Meyer | Confirmed 18 Dec 2025 en bloc; serving since 8 Jan 2026 | | Director of the Census | *vacant* | Seat empty since Feb 2025; no nominee | | Performing the duties of the Director | George M. Cook | Since 19 Sep 2025; Commerce Deputy Under Secretary | | Deputy Director for Data, Policy and Science | Michael Lachanski | Appointed 12 Jun 2026 | | Deputy Director for Administration and Operations | John Studds | Appointed 12 Jun 2026 | | Assoc. Dir., Decennial Census Programs | Deborah M. Stempowski | Since 2022 | | Assoc. Dir., Demographic Programs | Karen Battle | Acting | | Assoc. Dir., Economic Programs | Deirdre Dalpiaz Bishop | — | | Assoc. Dir., Research and Methodology / Chief Scientist | Rob Sienkiewicz | Acting | | Assoc. Dir., Field Operations | Timothy P. Olson | — | | Assoc. Dir., Communications | James P. Moore, Jr. | — | | Chief Administrative Officer | Madiha D. Latif | — | | Chief Financial Officer | Fernandez Boards | — | | Chief Information Officer | Mark Markovic | Acting | | Chief, Program, Performance & Stakeholder Integration | *vacant* | — | | Regional Director, Atlanta | Catyna Simon | — | | Regional Director, Chicago | Marilyn A. Sanders | — | | Regional Director, Denver | Cathy L. Lacy | — | | Regional Director, Los Angeles | Julie Lam | — | | Regional Director, New York | Leila N. Dickerson | — | | Regional Director, Philadelphia | Josh D. Winston | — | | Performing the duties of Commerce Inspector General | Duane Townsend | Since 7 Jul 2025 | | Chair, House Oversight & Government Reform | James Comer (R-KY) | — | | Chair, Senate Homeland Security & Govt. Affairs | Rand Paul (R-KY) | — | ## Notes - **The five-year term is doing nothing here.** The term structure at § 21(b) was written in 2012 precisely so a Director's tenure would straddle administrations. It only works if someone is confirmed into it. The 2022–2026 term — the term that covers the whole of 2030 planning — has been vacant for about nineteen of its final twenty-three months, and under § 21(b)(2) anyone confirmed now inherits only the remainder, which expires 31 December 2026. A nominee sent today would serve a matter of weeks before the next term begins. - **Removal at § 21(b)(3) is notice, not cause.** The President may remove the Director for any reason or none; the only obligation is written reasons to both Houses sixty days *before* the removal. Compare the removal-power line the vault tracks at [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] — this is weaker than a for-cause provision and stronger than nothing, and it has never been tested, because no Director has been removed under it. - **The deputy has no statute at all.** This is the finding that reframes the chart. Title 13 § 21 creates the Director; § 22 says permanent personnel must be citizens; §§ 23–26 deal with temporary staff, enumerators and travel. Nowhere is a Deputy Director created, described or protected. The [[Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act]] in the 117th Congress would have made it a single career-reserved position and was never enacted. So the June 2026 restructuring — abolishing the career COO post and creating two appointed deputies in its place — required no legislation, no confirmation and no notice, and was announced in a press release that framed both appointments as answering the Commerce Secretary's call. - **Every seat above the Bureau is confirmed; the Bureau's own top seat is not.** The Secretary and the Under Secretary hold Senate-confirmed offices. The Director's seat, the one Congress attached a term and a removal procedure to, is empty and its duties are being performed by an official whose home office is the Under Secretary's. The chain of command now runs Commerce → Bureau with no confirmed Bureau principal in it. - **The external advisory layer is gone, and the replacement is a private club.** All three census advisory committees were terminated by a single Federal Register notice, 90 FR 24383 (10 June 2025), one of fourteen Commerce committees killed together under [[Executive Order 14217]]. Because they were *discretionary* committees under the [[Federal Advisory Committee Act]], terminating them took a Secretary's determination and a notice — no vote, no comment period. The Independent Census Scientific Advisory Committee that met in September 2025 is a voluntary body of former members; it has no charter and no access, which means its advice is advice about publicly available material. - **GAO's high-risk designation is not there either.** The queue item that generated this map assumed a standing GAO high-risk designation over the decennial census. There is not one: GAO removed the 2020 Decennial Census from the High-Risk List in 2023 after the Bureau addressed its priority recommendations, and said it would *monitor* 2030 planning and consider re-adding the census if risks increased. Monitoring is not a designation, and it triggers nothing on its own. - **Three acting seats, one vacancy, one empty directorship — all at once.** Demographic Programs, Research and Methodology, and the CIO are all acting; the Office of Program, Performance and Stakeholder Integration is vacant; the Director's seat is unfilled. So is the Commerce IG's. The structural point is not any one of these but the simultaneity: at the moment the Bureau is designing the 2030 count, most of the seats that would sign off on that design are held by people who can be replaced tomorrow. - **The permanent agency and the decennial agency are two different organizations.** The chart's last branch is the one that makes the Bureau unusual. Six regional offices and a processing center run continuous surveys year-round with a few thousand permanent staff; then once a decade §§ 23–24 let the Secretary build a temporary organization of several hundred thousand people outside the normal classification system, run a census with it, and dissolve it. The 2030 surge will be hired and released under the leadership structure above. - **Not asserted here:** current permanent headcount. Reported 2025–26 figures vary by what is counted (direct FTE, reimbursable FTE, budget request vs. actuals) and the underlying budget documents are requests rather than enacted levels. The FY2026 budget's proposal to consolidate [[Bureau of Labor Statistics]], [[Bureau of Economic Analysis]] and the Census Bureau under the Under Secretary is a **proposal**, not structure, and is deliberately not drawn on the chart. ## See also - [[Census Data Products Tree]] — what the institution charted here actually publishes, and the 2026 Commerce order that now sets the method for all of it. - [[Census Bureau]] · [[Census]] · [[How the Census Is Actually Counted]] · [[How the Census Apportions Congress]] - [[Federal Statistical System Tree]] · [[Executive Branch Org Chart]] · [[Federal Workforce Structure Tree]] - [[Department of Commerce]] · [[Chief Statistician of the United States]] · [[Bureau of Economic Analysis]] - [[Robert Santos]] · [[Ron Jarmin]] · [[Howard Lutnick]] - [[Executive Order 14217]] · [[Federal Advisory Committee Act]] · [[Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act]] - [[2030 Census]] · [[American Community Survey]] · [[Differential Privacy]] · [[Census Citizenship Question]] ## Sources All verified 22 September 2026. - [13 U.S.C. ch. 1, subch. II — Officers and Employees](https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=%2Fprelim%40title13%2Fchapter1%2Fsubchapter2&edition=prelim) — §§ 21–26, text in force; the primary source for the term, vacancy, removal and temporary-personnel provisions, and for the absence of any deputy director - U.S. Census Bureau, [Executive Leadership](https://www.census.gov/about/leadership.html), page last revised 13 Aug 2026 — the directorates, management offices, and which seats are acting or vacant - U.S. Census Bureau, [Census Bureau Announces Appointment of Two New Deputy Directors](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/two-new-deputy-directors-appointed.html), 12 June 2026 — the restructuring of the number-two post - U.S. Census Bureau, [Regional Offices](https://www.census.gov/about/regions.html) — the six regions, their directors and their state coverage - U.S. Census Bureau, [National Processing Center](https://www.census.gov/about/npc.html) — NPC functions and the Charlestown relocation - [90 FR 24383, Notice of Termination of 14 Discretionary Federal Advisory Committees](https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/FR-2025-06-10/2025-10398), 10 June 2025 — the termination of all three census advisory committees under [[Executive Order 14217]] - The Census Project, [Trump Administration Officially Disbands Census Advisory Committees](https://thecensusproject.org/2025/06/10/trump-administration-officially-disbands-census-advisory-committees/), 10 June 2025 - GAO, [2030 Census: Preparations Are Underway with Changes to How the Count Takes Place](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107886) — monitoring rather than high-risk designation - CRS, [The Census Bureau Director](https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF11845) — appointment and term - [H.R. 8326, Ensuring a Fair and Accurate Census Act](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8326), 117th Congress — the unenacted deputy-director and advisory-committee provisions